Faculty Affiliate Dr. Diana Coffey

Dr. Diana Coffey is an assistant professor of Sociology and Population Research at UT Austin. She studies social influences on health in India. Her research focuses on the intergenerational transmission of poor population health resulting from India's exceptionally poor maternal nutrition. It traces links among gender, stratification, and poor birth, childhood, and adult health outcomes.

Another area of her research finds consequences of poor sanitation in developing countries for early life health, including for mortality, height, and anemia. She has also studied the causes of open defecation in rural India. Rural India's exceptionally high rate of open defecation has much less to do with poverty than with social forces: the renegotiation of caste and untouchability leads people to reject the inexpensive latrines that prevent disease in other developing countries.

Dr. Coffey’s research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, as well as Social Science & Medicine, Demography, and other journals. Her forthcoming book, with Dean Spears, is titled "Where India Goes: Abandoned Toilets, Stunted Development, and the Costs of Caste."

She is a visiting researcher at the Indian Statistical Institute in Delhi and she co-founded and co-directs a research non-profit called r.i.c.e., a research institute for compassionate economics, which aims to inform policies about child health in India. She has a PhD in Public Affairs and Demography from Princeton University, a Master of Public Affairs in Development Studies from Princeton University, and a BA in Sociology and a BA in Letters from Villanova University.

Innovations for Peace and DevelopmentBEL 2.14, The University of Texas at AustinAustin, TX, 78712